Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster
Final Project Part One
Cary Farrington
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Critique of Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations:
The Mann Gulch Disaster In Helena National Forest in Montana, a lightning storm passed through one summer afternoon. The next day, August 5th, 1949, a forest ranger spotted a wildfire believed to have been started by a lightning strike in an area known as the Mann Gulch. Sixteen Firefighters were dispatched by air, met up with the forest ranger who spotted the fire, and all began fighting the fire together. This paper will serve as a critique of the article The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster written by Karl E. Weick and published in the Administrative Science Quarterly Volume 38 in 1993. Weick describes many, mostly qualitative and observational, research methods such as interviews, trace records, archival records, direct observation, personal experience, and mathematical models (Weick, 1993) that were used by Maclean in his award-winning book Young Men and Fire, which describes the Mann Gulch fire. These methods were all good methods, or at least, the best methods available to MacLean. Twenty-eight years had passed by the time Maclean started his research, and only two survivors remained alive. Therefore, Maclean was left with archive research, interviews of the two survivors, interviews of a few of the deceased firefighters’ surviving family members, and his own personal experience as a forest service firefighter. Weick is left with the work Maclean did in 1976 and expands upon it by stripping the “prose” of Macleans writing and using only the context for analysis (Weick, 1993). So the research Weick can be categorized as ex post facto, since the research happened after the event. Exploratory, since it carries a loose structure and its objective is to identify future research or organizational application. Monitoring, since there was no communication between Weick and
Cary Farrington
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Critique of Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations:
The Mann Gulch Disaster In Helena National Forest in Montana, a lightning storm passed through one summer afternoon. The next day, August 5th, 1949, a forest ranger spotted a wildfire believed to have been started by a lightning strike in an area known as the Mann Gulch. Sixteen Firefighters were dispatched by air, met up with the forest ranger who spotted the fire, and all began fighting the fire together. This paper will serve as a critique of the article The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster written by Karl E. Weick and published in the Administrative Science Quarterly Volume 38 in 1993. Weick describes many, mostly qualitative and observational, research methods such as interviews, trace records, archival records, direct observation, personal experience, and mathematical models (Weick, 1993) that were used by Maclean in his award-winning book Young Men and Fire, which describes the Mann Gulch fire. These methods were all good methods, or at least, the best methods available to MacLean. Twenty-eight years had passed by the time Maclean started his research, and only two survivors remained alive. Therefore, Maclean was left with archive research, interviews of the two survivors, interviews of a few of the deceased firefighters’ surviving family members, and his own personal experience as a forest service firefighter. Weick is left with the work Maclean did in 1976 and expands upon it by stripping the “prose” of Macleans writing and using only the context for analysis (Weick, 1993). So the research Weick can be categorized as ex post facto, since the research happened after the event. Exploratory, since it carries a loose structure and its objective is to identify future research or organizational application. Monitoring, since there was no communication between Weick and